30 November 2013

Proto-Protestantism: Narratives and Nomenclature (Part II)

It must be remembered that strictly speaking before
the Enlightenment Protestantism on a social level was quite Liberal and
Progressive. It was rejecting the conservative norms. It wasn't looking back,
it was looking ahead. Only after the Enlightenment shift was underway and
decimating the church and society did Protestants start to look back with
longing.

This Progressivism sought to re-form Christendom.
Sometimes this was in terms of a Protestant bloc, but often it was in terms of
the growing Nationalism that was developing in the new state-empowered era. In
this era and way of thinking (which is still with us) proto-Protestants were
viewed through a Nationalistic or Tribal lens. In many ways this both a
pre-cursor and overlaps with what the Romantic Movement would be doing with the
Middle Ages. They would re-cast history and form narratives in order to meet
the propaganda needs and desires of the present. The times of yore were
magnified and glorified in order to demand social change.

Celtic Christians, Lollards and Hussites would
become fodder for Nationalist sympathies and their project to sacralize the
state and society, forging a social consensus. While successful in individual nation
states those who employed these narrative in order to form a Protestant
International, a united Protestant Christendom, ultimately failed.

Other Protestants don't think in these terms at all.
Many are virtually unaware of the massive role the Magistrates played in the 16th
century Reformation. They view it strictly in religious terms and are hostile
to any attempts to explain the Reformation in terms of sociology. Many Revisionist
historians err in discounting religious motive, but many Christians err in
failing to grasp context.

And today as Cathedrals and Crusades are once more venerated,
they are unsure how to view the people of the Middle Ages who rejected Rome.

In fact many Protestant Church Histories almost
ignore the proto-Protestants. They always mention Wycliffe and Hus but they
never really tell the story of the Lollards and Hussites. The Waldensians are
almost ignored. If they do mention much it's usually in connection with the
post-Reformational Waldensians in the Cottian Alps who were assaulted in the 17th
century. They quote Milton's poem, maybe mention Cromwell's threats and the
story ends.

19th century historians like Wylie and
D'Aubigne spend more time on them. They did not wish to emphasize continuity
with the medieval Church. And yet, they quite irresponsibly ignore and in the
case of Wylie grossly and deliberately understate what happened with the
Hussites after Huss. Not all the chapters in Hussite history are glorious and
it's a poor historian indeed who chooses to omit what might harm the narrative
he seeks to weave.

These historians and certainly Protestant historians
of our day will certainly neglect and avoid the painful but patent reality that
the Reformation did undo the social consensus in Western Europe. The Roman
Catholic Church was the foundation of Medieval Christendom. If you wanted to
answer any social or legal question, Rome provided the framework for the
answer. With this foundation smashed, men had to look elsewhere. 'The Bible'
was the answer many gave and yet no one could agree on what it taught. Men
struggled to find ways to lay new foundation stones for the social order. Some
looked to laws of nature, others formulated ideas regarding the Divine Right of
kings.

While it certainly was not the intention or goal of
the Reformation, it can hardly be denied that in many ways it laid the path
that led to the Enlightenment. By undoing the social consensus and seeking to
create a new one, the Magisterial Reformation opened the door to Secularism and
the growth of the state as the foundation of society.

The Enlightenment can even be viewed as a
continuation of the Reformation. Liberal Christians think in these terms. The
Enlightenment was for them in many ways the telos, the end goal of the
Reformation.

You can't of course blame Luther and Calvin for the
Enlightenment but unwittingly they opened doors which allowed their bane to
enter. Or to put it another way, they created a new branch of Christendom, but
in order to do so they started a boulder rolling down a mountain. They didn't
want it to roll too far but by the time they tried to get it to stop, it was
too late and like it not their descendants would have to go along for the ride.

This whole perspective is totally missed by most
Protestants but is key to understanding how Roman Catholics and Eastern
Orthodox view the flow of Church History. For the Orthodox, Protestantism is
inseparable from Roman Catholicism and is simply the child of late medieval
Scholasticism.

Many factions will reach into the past, often in an
anachronistic fashion and try to claim various groups as continuous with their
own. There are Presbyterians who try and claim the Waldensians were all but
Presbyterians. I've seen Presbyterians and recently even Theonomists attempt to
claim Celtic Christianity as somehow emulating their viewpoint. It's an
outrageous travesty.

Of course many Baptists are quite keen to find
historical precedent and vindication in identifying with these various groups.
Others would accuse me of doing the same. While I am certainly doing this in
one sense, I'm arguing it's far more complicated and I would certainly argue
that virtually none of these groups are represented today. The vision of the
medieval Dissenter has been all but lost. Ironically it wasn't the Inquisition
that destroyed it. That devilish monstrosity certainly did its part. But
ultimately it was the temptation of power that came with the Reformation...the
same temptation that the early Church succumbed to in the Constantinian Shift.

There is some truth to some of these claims of
continuity. Certainly groups like the Lollards were arguing for the principles
of Sola Scriptura even if they weren't employing that exact terminology. Hence
they were quite hostile to many aspects of the Roman Catholic system. Wycliffe
himself never abandoned the idea of the sacral state-church unity. With regard
to the Lollards the testimony is mixed. Were they followers of Wycliffe or did
they (as some strongly argue) antedate him? They didn't teach Sola Fide
(Justification by Faith Alone), but they did argue the Bible was the standard
for all Christian doctrine, itself a rejection of Romanism.

So what became of the Lollards? They disappeared
with the Reformation because they joined it. In fact in 'Albion's Seed' DH
Fischer argues East Anglia was the center of Lollard activity, their area of
highest concentration. This same area, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex would later
become the cradle of Puritanism.

So was Puritanism (in some sense) the heir of
Lollardy? Yes, in some sense. And yet they are of course not exactly the same,
and neither group was entirely monolithic. In fact perhaps it could be argued
someone like Richard Baxter might have taught a system more compatible or akin to
the Lollard way of thinking. Baxter was respected by many, but many Puritans
considered him to be a heretic who denied Justification by Faith Alone.

The Hussites were also divided. The Utraquists were
still mostly Roman Catholic in mentality and the Taborites were definitely more
extreme, more determined to follow through with Biblical reform. The Taborites and
their violent nationalist agenda did not survive. Instead, Utraquism continued
and later would blend nicely with Lutheranism and the more Biblically
conservative groups would reject Tabor's violence. Influenced by men like Petr
Chelcicky (who was highly critical of Tabor) they would go on to form the
Unitas Fratrum or the Bohemian Brethren as they are sometimes known.
Interestingly this group did not 'join' with the main Reformation bodies but
continued on its own separate path. Under the leadership of Lucas of Prague
many of Chelcicky's ideas were destroyed and he moved them to a more centrist
and compromised position.Later after
the Thirty Years War they would seek refuge in Germany and through contacts
with German Pietism be transformed into the Moravians.

So can the Lutherans or Reformed 'claim' the
Hussites as somehow being precursors to their own belief systems? In some ways.
Yes, some of the Hussite groups were committed to Scriptural fidelity, but
these are not the ones who later joined with the Magisterial Protestantism.
Those that did (the Utraquists) were less committed to the principle of Sola
Scriptura. The Taborites and Utraquists certainly thought in terms of state
Christianity. They just wanted it their way. Only the followers of Chelcicky,
the Chelcice Brethren and the later Unitas would reject the entire Constantinian
construct.

The Waldensians are others 'claimed' by Magisterial
Protestantism but this is most doubtful. The Waldensians have often been
identified as two main bodies, the Poor of Lyons and the Poor Lombards. The
Lyons group was basically restricted to France and was a little less Biblicist.
The Lombard group spread across Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary (which today
includes swathes of Croatia, Romania and Slovakia) and certainly Bohemia and
Moravia, today's Czech Republic.

This group wasn't monolithic either and had no
central institutionalized structure. For many this alone is a problem. For many
ecclesiastical thinkers institutionalization is 'the' mark of the Church and
its claims to legitimacy. The Waldensians functioned as congregations in many
cases visited by wandering teachers.

Apart from their strict Biblicism their other
hallmark position was a rejection of Constantinianism. They rejected the idea
of the Church being wedded to worldly power. Power (and its twin Wealth)
represents violence and coercion, a kingdom antithetical to the Spiritual
Kingdom established by the Holy Spirit. These groups dated this shift to the
Donation of Constantine when Constantine supposedly gave the Pope political
reign over Western Europe. Up until the Renaissance people believed this
document was legitimate and dated to the 4th century. At that time
it was discovered to be a forgery, probably composed during the time of
Charlemagne.

Nevertheless even if the foundational documents were
a fraud, the principles they represented were the reality. The Waldensians
rejected this on theological grounds. It doesn't matter if the Donation was a
forgery, it was just a tool the Papacy used to support their argument for the
principle.

Unlike the medieval Catholic Church and our
contemporary American Church, the Waldensians rightly understood that money and
wealth were the foundations of power. Their denunciation of riches and
embracing poverty was no mere rejection of worldly goods and materialism. This
wasn't some kind of monkish asceticism. This was a principled rejection of the
world system, the impulse to seek one's own advantage...to the disadvantage of
others. It was a refusal to compromise with a world system and to accept the
ethics that it demands.

Money buys and affords influence, security, and respectability...things
incompatible with the Christian Ethic laid out by Christ Himself.

Riches lead to ownership, manipulation and the
exploitation of others which are all forms of violence. Money is power, poverty
is a rejection of not just money, but power. That's the key to understanding
their devotion to poverty.

And poverty doesn't have to mean living in rags. The
Waldensians lived but in refusing to compromise they were often on the fringes
of society. Even this wasn't static. There are stories of Waldensians become
weavers because it afforded them a cover for travel and meetings. Some did well
enough financially and there are times when groups of Waldensians would have to
examine themselves and purge the worldliness they had embraced. But generally
speaking their fidelity led them to impoverishment and often they lived
semi-communally out of ideology and for both security and the ability to
maximize resources.

The Roman Catholic Church was forced to answer this
because this call for poverty absolutely resonated with the public and
thousands joined the various Waldensian groups. The 11th and 12th
centuries saw the Papacy grow not only in terms of political power but in
wealth and extravagance.

The Papacy sought to employ the Franciscans as a
sort of Roman Catholic answer to Waldensianism. This didn't go so well at first
as many Franciscans ended up turning on Rome. But eventually the Franciscans
coupled with the activities of groups like the Dominicans did much to arrest
the growth of Biblical Christianity.

These groups also worked to counter the Cathars who
also preached a message of poverty but in their case was mixed with a Gnostic
cosmology and spirituality.

The Magisterial Reformation categorically rejected
this view and the Waldensians who joined with Protestantism abandoned this
viewpoint. They succumbed to the temptation of security and respectability,
even power that the New Constantinianism, the Reformation offered to them.

The only groups that rejected this were the
Anabaptists. Some see continuity between the Waldensians and the Anabaptists
and it is very probable. This is an old debate regarding Anabaptist origins.
Did they arise out of the Reformation and break off very early or were they in
fact the result of proto-Protestant ideology at work? There's probably some
truth to both positions.

Does that mean the Waldensians rejected infant
baptism? The overwhelming testimony is in the negative. They accepted it and
certainly Chelcicky (who some believe may have been a Waldensian affiliate)
didn't reject it.

Were some of them ideologically Donatist? Did they
re-baptise, re-do Roman Catholic baptism? Yes, but that doesn't mean they (or
the Donatists) were Baptist. The Baptist argument is that only believers who
can articulate their faith, thus requiring a certain age, can be baptised. This
was not the view of the Donatists or certainly the majority of theWaldensians.
Far from being Baptists the Donatists most certainly baptised and communed
infants and I would argue the Waldensians did the same.

There were some small groups floating around during
this period who were Baptistic but that was not the hallmark of
pre-Reformational protest. It doesn't defeat the Baptist argument per se, but
an appeal to proto-Protestantism doesn't make their case.

For others the difficulty arises with the whole
question of institution. They grow uncomfortable appealing to proto-Protestant
groups because they lacked coherence and the key article of the Reformation,
the Lutheran formula of Justification. Luther said this was the article by which
the Church stood or fell. Of course Rome had never embraced this doctrine, but
in the tortured logic of the institutionalist the fact that they hadn't
formally denied it (itself an absurd possibility since it didn't exist prior to
Luther)... Rome was still the True Church.

Thus Protestantism has never really wished to claim
the Church of the Middle Ages was underground and hiding in caves and forests.
This way they can claim the heritage of the medieval West and declare
continuity. The Culture War minded Church of our present day is even more
determined to ally with Roman Catholicism in the fight against secularism and
less interested in the message the Waldensians and others who rejected power.

Where was your Church prior to Luther? This is the
deafening charge ringing in the ears of many Protestants and every faction
whether Reformed, Lutheran or Anglican has sought to answer it in their own
way. But Rome is begging the question assuming the Church exists in
institutional forms that can be pointed to. All institutionalists have sought
bureaucratic forms to instigate and maintain 'unity' and have never been able
to find it. Biblicists have always argued the unity is Spirit-wrought and
doesn't require adding additional ecclesiastical forms or structures to the
Biblical model of independent congregations existing in fellowship with one
another. Unity resting in institutional forms at best creates an empty shell, a
veneer.